1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bump ball crimping apparatus, and in particular, to a bump ball crimping apparatus suitable for use when crimping bump balls simultaneously on the bonding pads of a semiconductor device formed on a semiconductor substrate such as a silicon substrate.
2. Background Art
Conventionally, in the manufacturing process of a semiconductor device such as an IC, LSI, or VLSI, a bump ball crimping apparatus is used as an apparatus that forms bump balls simultaneously on the pads of a semiconductor device formed on a semiconductor substrate such as a silicon wafer.
This bump ball crimping apparatus comprises an alignment plate (aligning tool) on which a plurality of bump balls are held by suction on a suction opening; a crimping table (sample table) on which a silicon wafer is mounted, this silicon wafer having formed thereon a plurality of bonding pads disposed below the aligning plate; and a crimping mechanism that crimps the plurality of bump balls disposed above the aligning plate and held by suction to the aligning plate to the bonding pads of the silicon wafer. Up to the present, various apparatuses have been proposed for this bump ball crimping apparatus (for example, refer to: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. Hei 9-82748).
However, conventional bump ball crimping apparatuses crimp the same number of bump balls held by suction to the alignment plate on from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of bonding pads on a silicon wafer mounted on the crimping table. However, because the crimping table interferes with the aligning plate, there is the problem that it is not possible to crimp simultaneously bump balls on the bonding pads of the silicon wafer. Thus, a method has been used wherein a silicon wafer is partitioned into a plurality of small blocks, and bump balls are crimped in each of the small blocks sequentially. However, in this method, there is the problem that variation occurs in the height of the bumps. In addition, because bump balls are crimped on each small block sequentially, the time required for the crimping process becomes long, and the production efficiency deteriorates.
In consideration of the problems described above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a bump ball crimping apparatus that can crimp bump balls simultaneously on the bonding pads of a semiconductor device formed on a semiconductor substrate such as a silicon substrate, shortens the required time for the crimping process, and increases production efficiency.